Some Californians becoming homeless as EDD fails to send out unemployment checks

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Kathy Verlinden, 56, of Covina, arrives at the East San Gabriel Valley
Coalition for the Homeless at St. Christopher Parish Church in West
Covina on Wednesday evening, December 9, 2009. Verlinden is one of
thousands of Californians who have seen their unemployment checks
stalled because of a computer glitch at the state.

WEST COVINA – Since Monday, Kathy Verlinden has spent her nights living in a homeless shelter for the first time in her 56 years – all because the state couldn’t send her a vital piece of mail: her unemployment check.

It’s literally cost her the roof over her head – the small, $500-a-month Covina apartment she had to leave on Sunday.

“This just isn’t right,” she said. “Nobody should be going through this.”

But in some form or another, more than 100,000 eligible Californians are. They have not received their unemployment checks, which were due to them after Congress extended those benefits for 14 more weeks in November.

The problem? The state Employment Development Department’s 25- to 30-year-old computer programs can’t handle such a large and complex extension, department officials said. Eligible recipients include those whose benefits have run out, or could by the end of the year.

Essentially, the state’s system isn’t recognizing any more benefits for anyone. So, department technicians have had to add half a million lines of code and benefit amounts to an antiquated system to update the state’s unemployment claim programs to

the federal extension. And if they moved too quickly, they might jeopardize the payments of the other 1.2 million people in the state who have claims, state officials said.

“We’re working around the clock,” said Rick Macias, an employment department spokesman. “We’re doing all we can, but we have to do it very carefully.”

But for Verlinden – and the others who have been crowding online unemployment forums, demanding answers and describing their plight – that’s no consolation.

Instead of the regular Notice of Unemployment Insurance Claim that comes every two weeks – the one that for two years she filled out and sent back to get her $450 a week – she got a letter dated Nov. 20 that stated she’d have to wait several weeks for her extension.

But it was on Nov. 6 when President Barack Obama signed into law the extension of benefits. By Verlinden’s math, that’s $1,900 she’s owed.

According to her letter, people eligible for the extension will receive everything they are entitled to back to Nov. 8, after a round of testing of the updated programs.

The EDD is hoping to get claim forms out to eligible claimants starting next week.

In the meantime, Macias suggested that anyone who wants to get a head start on their claims go to the EDD’s Web site – www.edd.ca.gov – so they don’t have to wait for a form in the mail.

Verlinden and others have flooded representative’s offices with calls on the issue.

How can the government, knowing that statewide unemployment is at 12.5 percent, more than 15 percent in some areas of the San Gabriel Valley and 9 percent in Whittier, let this happen, they asked.

And how can a department that received $30 million in stimulus funding have bad computer programs, Verlinden asked.

“I’m very pissed off that the EDD is having such a difficult time getting this money to the residents of the state,” said Assemblyman Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, who said his office has received several calls on the matter. “There are individuals who can’t find work, are stuck, and where they are potentially going to lose their home or not going to be able to celebrate Christmas the way they would like to.”

Hernandez planned to discuss the issue today with his chief of staff and see what can be done. He also wanted to see if other assemblymembers were getting similar feedback from constituents.

For EDD officials, the delay is something that could not have been foreseen, but the goal is to get payments out by Christmas.

“No. 1: I don’t think any economist anywhere would have predicted we’d be in a recession of this severity and this length,” said Loree Levy, the EDD’s deputy director of public affairs. “Every state is challenged in implementing this, simply because we’ve never seen this number of benefit weeks in any extension.”

And back in West Covina, Verlinden has never had to sleep next to people she doesn’t know inside a shelter, just to keep from the overnight freeze.

“It’s embarrassing when you have to ask a friend to buy you toilet paper because you can’t afford it,” she said.